istan and that ubiquitous economic recession. I would have imagined that in the midst of such a crisis this violent system would be confronted and fearlessly reformed. And yet our attention remains diverted and has thwarted even the United Nation’s most honest and noble efforts. In 2000, this organization and other willing affiliates pronounced the Millennium Development Goals; charting out eight issues that the global community would tackle and overcome by the year 2015: to end poverty and hunger, achieve universal education, institutionalize gender equality, promote child and maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, develop sustainable environmental policies and work in a spirit of global partnership. Each of these goals is sadly always left for better days. But “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace […] to dusty death.” It never comes. And the trouble is, that these essential violations fuel the physical violence that assaults our attention. It is a vicious cycle, and by focusing on terrorism and economic bailouts for MNCs alone we treat only the symptom of a disease that will one day consume us all. During my research about the MDGs and their progress I was intrigued by the one that has seen the least of it: maternal health. Every minute of every day a woman in the developing world dies in childbirth; the World Health Organization estimates that this adds up to more than half a million women each year. I found two blogs dealing with the same issue; one by blogger Rowan Davies who participated in the G 20 Summit as part of Oxfam’s live Voice initiative, and the other by Aman, blogging for Word Press. My comments can be found at each of the respective sites as well as below.Comment: G 20 in Perspective
Aman,
In your brief post, you highlight a fundamental and forgotten issue. As we grow senseless in the fear of economic collapse, governments around the world are pouring money into fledgling companies, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into corrupt and greedy hands and simply delaying the closures and bankruptcies that will surely come. We have lost touch with the real issues and the real problems. An economic system that has allowed so many women to die in childbirth is a system that Must collapse and be reborn. Post-Cold War Capitalism is dead; and this may not be a bad thing. All of this so called progress, wealth and civilization has come at the cost of billions of people around the world whose reality cannot be reconciled with the lavish lifestyles and abuses we now see highlighted on media news screens. It is unseemly for me to believe that in the same world, a football player can be offered one hundred million pounds to play while millions die of cholera in Zimbabwe, of meningitis in Darfur and so many more wonder whether they will be able to afford a meal for their children tomorrow. I had such hopes that November’s historic and evocative election would bring forth this same realization in the halls of power. Instead of investing in the developing world, creating initiatives to develop effective treatments for the diseases that ravage the African continent and develop communities by educating and training health professionals, we throw mountains of cash on financial monsters that then slap us all across the face by giving bonuses to the architects of this fiasco. I do not believe that the answer to these tremendous problems faced by people in the developing world lies in aid. Humanitarian aid serves to belittle the incredible capacity and desire of local communities to propel themselves forward. Training and educational programs, such as the ones sponsored by the UK’s Department of International Development in Rwanda efficiently provide the knowledge and services so desperately required while fomenting local industries. It is this kind of economic investment that will lift the world out of its sorry state. The unexpected blast of the dramatic downturn we are drowning in has left us deaf and dumb. I hope that enough people will have the foresight to propose and enforce policies that concern themselves with the plight of the poorest and by investing in the health and education of women, create a new world order where socioec
onomic gaps are finally bridged and economics service the many and not the few.Comment: An abbreviation a day. Maybe an acronym if you're lucky.
Rowan,
While the West is far from finished reaping the economic catastrophe we have so irresponsibly sewn in the past decade, it is, as always, the developing world that will suffer the most for our overindulgent blunders. At the G 20 summit it was clear that world leaders are concerned with the plight of developing nations, and yet it seems that their response is inevitably misguided and problematic. Instead of providing funding for microfinance organizations and local development projects, governments threw money at the International Monetary Fund, whose Structural Adjustment Programs and one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions offer mixed results at best and at worst create what Joe Stiglitz terms “beggar thyself” cycles of inescapable poverty. It seems to me that, in the efforts of helping the developing world, the G 20 should have been mindful of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and provide more focused and directed investment to effective programs that support education and health initiatives. As you well note, the "crash in the West" will make for disastrous effects abroad. Oxfam has been particularly vocal about the need for continued aid and investment. Do you not believe, however, that Bretton Woods institutions are the wrong channels through which we should be funding our efforts to develop, educate and empower? I am a fervent proponent of more creative, grassroots efforts that remain honest, transparent and do not get immobilized by red tape and politics. Women's issues have proven particularly responsive to these initiatives. Organizations such as Kiva are beautiful because those numbers become people in whose future we are implicated. It is by renewing these bonds, or perhaps forging them for the first time, that the developed and the developing will come together to build a shared and just world. It was Michelle Obama's speech to a crowd of schoolgirls this week that I found the most grounded and promising moment of the Presidential visit to London. It is in the hands of girls and women where we must place our hopes and our trust. I am always surprised by man's inhumanity to man - that such statistics as the ones you present can exist. If this economic crisis shows us anything, it is that the models of the past are null and void. Moving forward means moving away from them and towards real and grounded solutions that put us all in closer contact with each others' humanity.
